A Different Angle

Jessa Madosky

J.S.

I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

A couple of nights ago, ABC News closed its Charles Gibson show with a look at an experimental aquaculture project east of Puerto Rico.  The farms were placed under geodesic domes, and located unusually deep.  Supposedly, this puts the farms in the way of deep currents, and therefore rendering them much less toxic than shallow-water farms.  The fish were a tropical species I had never heard of, long and horizontally striped, very beautiful.  The food given them was some sort of "organic pellet," but the contents were not described.  Everything looked superficially very promising for a sustainable aquaculture of the future.

But then, they showed how the fish are harvested: vacuumed up to the surface, apparently, from the great pressure of their deep water, too swiftly and too painfully, and dumped out into a bucket of ice.  Still thrashing about, until they asphyxiate.

No no no, this is not the way to do it.

And, whether there is really a way to do it, remains rather doubtful.

Unless of course we consider Jason's sushi, which sounds terrific.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

in this REAL world that we chose to live in (or we'd all be in yurts somewhere else OFF the grid)it is dang-gone near impossible to escape large scale comercial anything, no matter how hard we try.

THANK YOU UMBRA for your nod to real people who live in the real world.

No more overfishing; no more outrageous flesh farming; no more destruction of wildlife and biodiversity; very few emmissions to earth, air and water; much larger chance to finally achieve social balance and justice to all human societies; space and peace to all other living beings to follow their own lives.

And some kinds of fishing are clearly the best choice for their envrironment.

Take a well-managed wild salmon fishery (e.g. Alaska).  To maintain the salmon fishery, you need healthy, clean, and free-flowing rivers.  Many other animals and plants also depend on these rivers.  Fishing in this case is a wilderness-compatible industry that ends up supporting the base of the ecosystem.

The alternative?  Oil drilling, mining, and other destructive industries are the only other economic options in many remote places.  Vegetarian foods can be shipped in from thousands of miles away at high cost.

I believe that in some cases, buying a fish is not just an example of "realistic moderation", but a positive vote for the environment.

-Erin
www.aktrekking.com/pebble/

Thousands of years before refrigeration, salmon was smoked or dried for preservation.  I suspect, with the removal of water and the fact that it doesn't need to be refrigerated, that the transport cost per calorie isn't higher than any other dried food (perhaps better).  And smoked salmon is very tasty.

As for fresh fish - it suffers from the same problem as fresh produce.  Eating anything fresh that's not local and in season (whether fish or bananas) is environmentally costly.  I try to eat local food when  I can, but do choose a few shipped things.  And I do spend a lot of time in Alaska in the summer - where I can eat as much fresh fish as I please.

As for fish labeled incorrectly - that's certainly a problem, but not really an argument against eating fish.  No more than if someone was labeling organic produce incorrectly.  The long term solution to this is to lobby for stronger regulation/enforcement of labeling.  My short term solution is to buy from sources I trust, or pre-packaged from places where there is no salmon farming (like Alaska).  And in my experience, there's a huge taste differentce between farmed and wild salmon.

-Erin
www.aktrekking.com/pebble/

Salmon are carnivores.  And there's a reason, throughout history, that we've tended to farm herbivores (cows), rather than carnivores (lions).  It takes three pounds of wild-caught fish to make one pound of farm-raised salmon.  Very inefficient.
Some fish are herbivores (such as tilapia).  Farming them is not quite so bad (if done well), and is more analogous to farming land meat.    

And the inefficience isn't even the worst problems of salmon farming.  Usually done in pens in the open ocean, salmon farms decimate nearby wild runs with disease, dump incredible amounts of waste and toxins (used to kill the diseases) into the ocean, produce escapees that threaten wild runs, etc...

-Erin

But really, SSG, you are absolutely right, and refer to a big problem in our use of carnivorous fish.

Of course I agree with your last message, Erin McKittrE.  Earlier, though, you wrote this:
<<
I believe that in some cases, buying a fish is not just an example of "realistic moderation", but a positive vote for the environment.
>>

If ideally Alaskan fishers had all the power they might need to regulate the purity of both ocean waters and river waters, and could thoroughly manage the environment of their salmon, then I would say you have a point.

Meanwhile, whatever is caught in that area of the Northwest Pacific, between the Pribiloff Islands and Monterey, which, for want of a better name, I am pleased to call "the Jason Scorse Crescent," you all up there should eat.  We all, elsewhere, should always pass up Pacific salmon, however yummy it is.

Anyway, there remains the not unimportant issue of how fish, who are caught, and are served up for dinner, actually die.  To my knowledge, no humane way to euthanize a fish has been tried.  Usually, fish are brought from a considerable depth to the surface too quickly, by hook or by nets or by vacuum; and the changes in pressure for which the fish do not have time to adjust can injure internal organs, and surely cause pain.  Then, the caught fish are usually dumped on the surfaces of boats or docks, into a totally foreign atmospheric environment, including gravity, and gravity-forced contact with other fish; in such a hostile environment as that, which they must endure for as long as it takes, they are intended to asphyxiate.  And so, after a bit, they do.

May I recommend once again Jason's sushi.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

However, I think it's worth pointing out that we're balancing two different environmental values here.  One is energy use and C02 emissions - the costs of transporting fish.  The other is land use and the preservation of wild ecosystems - the benefits of supporting the salmon fishery.  It's not necessarily obvious how exactly we should choose between them.

>>If ideally Alaskan fishers had all the power they might need to regulate the purity of >>both ocean waters and river waters, and could thoroughly manage the environment of >>their salmon, then I would say you have a point.

The power of the fishermen is economic.  The more of their fish we buy, the more power they have.  For instance, there's a huge debate going on right now about whether to build a giant open pit mine at the headwaters of some of the world's most important salmon spawning rivers in Bristol Bay.  (Pebble Mine).  Who is the major opposition?  The fishermen.  Fishermen have some power in Alaska.  Without them, the mine would be a foregone conclusion.  With them, there's a chance of stopping it.

Currently, the Alaska salmon fishery is well managed, and not over fished.  The better the fishermen do economically, the more power they have to ensure the continued purity of the waters and health of the runs.

-Erin

j.s.

I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info.

One thing though, is that while killing is commonplace, it is not a moderate thing to do.  

Whew! :-\ [rolls eyes] Bumper-sticker wisdom.

Turning "moderation" into an artificially loaded buzzword such as "killing" is right in step with the divisive tactics of semantics utilized by many a politician. It only furthers the divide between parties.

Everyone and everything living on this planet is killing 'something' to sustain themselves... some people just deem certain genres of killing more acceptable than others. But any way you cut it, there needs to be balance between all things.

Not all killing is bad, m-kay? Recall the 'cycle of life' from fifth grade?

Moderation has more to do with sustainability, balance, conservation, resourcefulness, and appropriateness than you lead on. Oversimplifications of the complex interrelationships that comprise a vibrant, sustainable global ecosystem do nothing to further discussion.

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups!" --Steven Wright

Consider Pandu's excellent sentence: "While killing is commonplace, it is not a moderate thing to do."  Just because something is commonplace, hardly argues adequately for its moral correctness.

Moderation is a great virtue.  It takes a lot of work, because it requires much consideration of all sorts of interpretations of a moral issue, including what is "commonplace" and "acceptable," but also including what is prudent, what is just, what is generous, what is noble, what is courageous, what is loving.

It needs to be recognized as a great truth that, yes, killing is not a moderate thing to do.

That does not make all killing always indisputably bad.  I would distinguish between "indisputably bad," and "bad, regrettable, but arguably necessary."

Every act of killing is bad, and ought to be recognized as such.  Therefore, every act of killing is to be regretted and mourned.  No act of killing is moderate.  Sometimes an act of killing is the lesser of two evils.  In that case, it is a moral duty to commit that act wholeheartedly and unhesitantly.  But the regret, and the mourning, and the respect and love for the deceased, ought to be present.  When they are absent, then the act of killing, however "justified," just adds to the world's horror.

Cf. the instruction of Lord Krishna to Arjuna, in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the greatest religious texts from anywhere, ever.  The great hero Arjuna, surveying the forces opposed to his own before the battle, confesses that he sincerely loves so many of them, that he is unwilling to call for the attack.  Krishna, his divine and all-wise charioteer, persuades him that his union with the correct and good balance of the universe requires his calling for the attack, as well as his full engagement in a battle in which he will surely kill many friends on the opposing side.

Cf. also the third eschatological petition of the Lord's Prayer, "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  Christians herein express their bitter disappointment with the world as it is, including the all too frequent need to kill fellow living beings.  They have confidence that a better world may come, in which it will no longer be at all necessary to kill.

So: "not all killing is bad, m-kay?," is sort of true.  My point is, they lied to you in 5th grade, and in "The Lion King," if they allowed you to think that "the cycle of life" justifies everything, including killing all kinds of living beings, as if yours is the only life that matters.

The "cycle of life" liars are the over-simplifiers, not those wise teachers who ask us to consider the value of all life.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Can someone explain to me why I am not allowed to call myself an environmentalist because I eat meat once a month or so (but do not own a car), while vegans who drive 100 miles a day are? I mean, to paraphrase, no matter what you drive, producing a car and driving it is innately harmful to the ecosystem.

The reason is that even one meal of meat per month is a luxury that comes at an individually significant environmental cost, including unnecessarily taking the life of another animal.  On any given day, modern society is such that a person can choose meals entirely based on personal taste.  The abundance of vegetarian foods makes meat eating unnecessary, and the huge impact of agriculture in modern society makes vegetarianism necessary.

However, I cannot bike to work.  I cannot walk there; and I cannot bus there.  I don't live in a development where I can find people to carpool.  Driving alone is the only realistic option for getting from my home to my environmental law enforcement job, and so I drive the most efficient car I can afford.  

It's a matter of working within one's reasonable options.  That's all.  And, quite frankly, if you eat meat only once a month, I would not have a beef with you (oh what a pun!) calling yourself an environmentalist.  Indeed if everyone became such an environmentalist, I would be delighted.

........

As an aside, I happened across this "Veganism is Not Extreme" yesterday evening:

http://www.vegblog.org/archive/2006/12/04/veganism_is_not...

There is also some interesting discussion in the comments.

Of course you do, and plenty of others also, but as an economist, you yourself are preaching a reduction of subsidies and a free market. Clearly, you understand that a free market deals with ecosystems as resources rather than their intrinsic values. As such, ecosystems can be maintained and used... Or stripped for mines or strip malls. Hmm...
Which one do I prefer?

1. As an economist I am critical of the fact that economics doesn't make room for intrinsic values but that's more of philosophical question than one for economics and I can separate the two- economics is still the most powerful tool of analysis and policy to address environmental issues.

2. And of course, resources can be used in numerous ways- some of which I view as bad- strip mines and or strip malls (notice though that not everyone agrees with me) or be preserved. My only point above way to say that we can CHOOSE to place instrinsic values on ecosystems and the market will respond- that's why I donate money to conservation organizations and why I vote for politicians who want to use our tax money to do the same.

Completely unimportant matters: In the heat of argument, we often tend to forget the second vowel of "separate."  And, we rather naturally want to assimilate "its" to the regular singular possessive ending in apostrophe-S, "it's," even if that adds a bit of effort.  A very interesting phenomenon.

"Extreme," from Latin "extremus," refers to the outermost, the last in space, but then also the last in time, the final.  One of the seven Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anointing of the Sick, including if possible a Penance and a Holy Communion, is so regularly given to persons on their death-beds that it used to be called "Unctio extrema," "Extreme Unction," i.e. the final anointing.

A very different image than that afforded by "extreme sports," cute sweaty young guys with skates or boards or whatever attached to their feet, flying in all kinds of angles, with nifty little helmets atop their adorable little heads.

So indeed, truly, it is the carnivores, whose diet requires the slaying of our animal cousins, who are the "extremists."

And those who refrain from that kind of diet, both vegetarians and vegans, having taken thought regarding the slaughter of animals, deserve to be called "moderate."  I would prefer the term "temperate," with frequent usages in older translations of classical philosophy, but perhaps that has become associated nowadays with strictly ceasing one's Scotch-imbibing with a bottle-and-a-half per evening.

To Mihan: I have no idea what hoops one must tumble through, and leap through, prancingly, higher higher higher, landing perfectly on tip-toes, in order to deserve to be called an "environmentalist."  When the term becomes so competitive and athletic, it ceases to be interesting.  So, I tend to avoid it.  It really is a matter of no importance, what people think of us, no?  Their judgments of us are irrelevant.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I have to disagree about the extreme sportspeople, though. I find that the boy skiers tend to be the hottest, whereas the female skaters (sk8ers, if you prefer, which I don't) and snowboarders give me sweaty palms. To each his or her own, I guess.